The Michael Scott School of Art
by WhiteDresses
Summary: The Michael Scott Paper Company is celebrating its second week of being open for business. Unfortunately, Ryan cannot attend, leaving Pam alone with Michael in his condo for the first time since Day One. Michael/Pam, written for a gift exchange.


Written for a gift exchange on LiveJournal. Techinically, I don't think I'm supposed to be posting this publicly anywhere yet (the exchange, for the moment, is anonymous), but I wanted to get this out here before I forgot to...

I miss writing fanfiction xD I need to get back into it. Expect more The Office fanfiction once Season 6 premieres!

Anyway the prompt was: Michael/Pam: First romantic evening together. I didn't do _exactly_ this, but I did go off of it!

**Warnings**: Rated M for sexual content... but it isn't too explicit. Rating is mostly for safety.

I hope you all enjoy it! Strangely, it's my first heterosexual Office fanfic, ahaha. I'm very pleased with the results.

* * *

There are days when Michael occasionally reminds Pam of Roy.

Yes. _Roy_.

Not in the sense that he looks or sounds like Roy; but sometimes when Michael just _talks_ she can envision Roy saying the things he says too, and it scares her, because she assumes that her ex-fiance is back to hurt Jim or cause some sort of other trouble.

But Michael and Roy, she concludes in her mind at the end of each day, are nothing alike.

Roy was large and strong, clumsy with words when talking to women and sometimes harsh and brutal when talking with the guys. And Pam knows how Michael must have felt when Roy was still working in the warehouse. She had been slurred at and the butt of teasing among Roy's friends just as often as he, though it was... slightly different. And even still she didn't doubt that Roy had loved her.

Pam was having one of those days.

Maybe it was because it had started like this for her and Roy-- no Jim around, her at his house, supposed to be working on something academic when all of a sudden... BOOM, something had started. A long several-year engagement something. And as Pam sat at the kitchen table of Michael's condo, twiddling a pen in one hand and making a slight fist in her lap with the other, she began to feel anxious. This hadn't been the first meeting of the Michael Scott Paper Company... but it _was_ the first meeting they had had without Ryan since Day 1.

He was trying to prepare them a nice dinner on his George Foreman grill despite her insisting on them ordering takeout... which is what she and Roy had done--and oh god, there she goes again. Maybe, she figures, it is a good sign that things are different, and so she doesn't insist further.

She can't seem to keep Michael on task, either. It's always:

"Can't you see that I'm busy being a gourmet chef, Pam?! And besides, we can't think about work on empty stomachs."

And,

"I'm trying to savor the taste, Pam. There are children in Africa who would be dying to have a piece of this steak."

Maybe they should have opened a restaurant.

She jokingly voices this to Michael later as they are about to get down to business, but he waves it off and smiles largely as though it's just a huge compliment, but no big deal (she knows it really is). A part of her is sort of serious though-- the MSPC was already in a pretty sickening amount of debt.

They sit down on the couch and are all ready to get to work when Michael announces, "Happy 2-Week Anniversary, Pam!" before she can breathe a word about business matters. She glances over, slightly irritated at the further delay, and finds that Michael has retrieved a bottle of red wine and all she can do is stare at him disbelievingly, a heavy, gross feeling growing in the pit of her stomach.

"Shouldn't we wait until Ryan's back to celebrate?" She asks as Michael removes the cork and begins to pour her out a glass. "I know he'd want to be here for this." _Lies._

Michael gives her a small grin and pours a glass for himself. "Hey, when you and I started this two weeks ago, where was Ryan? Ryan was at a bowling alley handing out shoes. But you and I are originals." He nods to show that he is sure of what he's saying, but somehow Pam doesn't feel reassured or as though they should be doing this. But he holds up the glass cheerfully, anyway. "To us, Pam!"

"Er, yeah," Pam concedes against her better judgment, their glasses clinking against one another in the air. She feels his expectant glance waiting on her to take a drink, so she sips gently, remembering the similar mistake she had made years ago.

"So I drew up a couple of designs for the logo..." Pam starts again, trying her best to bring them back to the reason they were there, reaching into her purse to pull out a small sketchbook. Michael smiles and nods eagerly while making various impressed and meaningless sounds as she explains her designs and the image each would give the company. But as she talks, she wonders if he is really listening or if his mind is brewing up some other idea as he stares at the art.

"These are soooo good, Pam!" Michael says in genuine awe, leaning in to get a closer look as soon as she is finished. Pam smiles in return and is caught off-guard long enough for Michael to take the sketchbook out of her hands and begin flipping through the pages. She freezes in shock at the action before trying in vain to get it back from him.

"Hey! Please give it back. Please." She goes red in embarassment as he puts the sketchbook even further out of her reach. Sometimes Michael really reminds Pam of Roy.

He laughs playfully as she hurriedly tries to tell him, "They're only rough sketches... please give it back," until he becomes suddenly serious and his eyes widen at the pictures he sees. Pam buries her face in her hands in exasperation, giving up, her efforts useless.

"Wow..." Michael says finally, frowning at the first page he sees. He flips to the next page. "Pam... these are _amazing_. How are you so good at this? I knew you had some talent, but wow, Pam. Wow." Pam shakes her head and refuses to look at him. She assumes he's mocking her in his Michael-ish, Roy-ish way.

"Ok, I'll be taking that back now..."

"No, really," Michael continues, a gleam in his eye, "They're brilliant!"

Pam finally manages to regain her composure and succeeds in snatching the sketchbook back from him as soon as he's distracted by another one of the pictures. He looks slightly disappointed, but Pam tries to ignore that and get them both back on track. After all, if she doesn't hurry, he's bound to start doing karaoke, ventriloquism, or stand-up comedy. Or a mixture of the three.

"So which do you like best? I could draw up a couple more designs for you tomorrow if you don't like them."

"Don't like them?! _Pam_, I like them both! They're so well done. How could I possibly pick between the two?!"

Pam remains silent and doesn't answer, waiting for him to pick anyway. He never does-- there are other things on his mind.

And before she knows it, he's closer than ever to her on the couch, his face inches away from hers, his breath on her ear. She's surprised at herself that she doesn't jerk away.

"Hey -- if the Michael Scott Paper Company doesn't work out, you and I... we could start the Michael Scott School of Art," he says gently, playing with a piece of her hair.

And she's surprised at herself and the shiver that races quickly down her spine as his words compel her to kiss him passionately on the lips. Michael's eyes widen in shock, but he smiles into the kiss. Pam's eyes are closed tightly and she can't see a thing except for the new vision and feelings inside her mind.

But that _vision_ is enough to get her up, her legs stretching against her skirt painfully as she straddles him and buries her face into his shoulder. He chuckles and mumbles something that she can't catch -- she's too busy wondering what Michael could possibly know about art. But it doesn't matter, because she's already riding him, lost in the fantasy he has given her, even if it, like the paper company, could never have a chance of happening or succeeding.

And as they rock together on the couch, kissing and touching, Michael murmurs messily in her ear about the potential teachers, the classes, inventing more extravagantly as their pleasure mounts until, she thinks with a shrill, laughing moan, the school he is describing sounds more like a vaguely artistic version of Hogwarts rather than a real place to teach art. But that's always been Michael's way, to think big, outside the lines, out of the box, and it's what drew her to him – in the real world she is in love with Jim, engaged to Jim, ready to marry Jim and raise children with Jim, and that's what she wants, but she wanted to be an artist once, and even the prospect of a life filled with child-rearing and secretarial work spreading out in front of her cannot entirely squash that desire.

In this moment with Michael she can believe that she might run away from this, make the decision to give up the life she knows will be practical and make her happy but which will not satisfy the recesses of her soul, to travel to Paris, or Venice, or Florence, or any other far-away from Scranton city and become an artist.

Michael thrusts inside her and whispers dreams, not understanding the depth of her need for him but with his grunts and muscle-tense giggles of her name pouring into her some small aspect of his belief in the possible. With Michael inside her, Pam feels infinite.

And that's what sets him apart from Roy and, in a way that makes her cringe guiltily at the thought, Jim. In a world with Michael there is no responsibility to hold her down, even if that responsibility and stability is what she has always been and longed for.

When Pam is with Michael, she feels unrestrained and free; her dreams acheivable. And for the moment, that's all she wants.

That is, until something familiar begins to shout persistently near her head... and she wakes to begin her day.

* * *

Thank you very much for reading! Please leave me a review if you liked it and/or if you have some constructive criticism for me!

-- Melissa/WhiteDresses


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